Ron Paul Orange Rolls

Adelaide says:

I’ll send orange rolls home with Jill for you to try. I made them last night and refrigerated them overnight so we could have hot rolls for breakfast. I used a cookie sheet instead of a 9×13 pan, and some of them burnt on the bottom (the filling spilled out, which maybe doesn’t happen with the pan?) So I’ll have to try it again using two 9×13 pans to see if they turn out better, but they still tasted great!

You could easily half the recipe for only a dozen rolls. Also a package of active dry yeast is equivalent to 2 tsp (in case you use a jar of yeast, like I do.)

I ate three of the rolls and they were mighty delicious. Adelaide, you should have sent over a whole plateful.

I gave out the recipe for the Banana Nut Bread but this time get the Cookbook and support the Ron Paul Campaign.

Further Reading

• Richd K Miller — Voted for Romney in 2008. In 2012 voting for Ron Paul
• End the Fed
• The Revolution: A Manifesto
• Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom

Photo Credit: Adelaide of Ada Shot Me

Ron Paul Banana Nut Bread

What I did different: I didn’t use nuts, as we didn’t have any pecans, which is what I like using in banana nut bread. Also, I used 2 mini loaf pans instead of a regular sized loaf pan, but still cooked it for 45 minutes.

Ron Paul Banana Nut Bread

½ cup sugar
2 eggs
3 ripe mashed bananas
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
3 tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts

Mix and bake the ingredients at 350° for 45 minutes.

So how did it taste? Adelaide said:

Oh, and it was really good. We ate one of the loaves yesterday (which is when I baked it) and have devoured most of the second one today.

Further Reading

• Richd K Miller — Voted for Romney in 2008. In 2012 voting for Ron Paul
• End the Fed
• The Revolution: A Manifesto
• Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom

Photo Credit: Adelaide of Ada Shot Me

The police, as I understand it, are empowered to enforce the law, protect property and reduce civil disorder. Kaysville has 20 full-time police officers. However, the current police station does not meet acceptable seismic standards and has no emergency operations center or secure IT area for the city.

At build-out the city will have grown from 26,000 residents to 42,000. There is no space at the police station to accommodate city and department growth. Problems also arise in evidence, records, and firearms storage; prisoner processing; secure parking; decontamination; training space; and other areas.

Although opposed to debt I also believe that the police and associated facilities are a most important part of any city. I therefore voted for the bond in early voting.

Consider that for $32.97 I get a shiny new police station compared with curbside recycling that would have cost me $46.20. If I had opted in, I would have had the same amount of garbage collected, but for more money. When one also considers that your garbage is already recycled into steam for Hill Air Force Base, which do you suppose is the better deal?

Kaysville City Police Station Floor Plan

Updates

November 2, 2010 General Election Results:

For the Police Station Bond: 3,171 (43.1%)
Against the Police Station Bond: 4,186 (56.9%)

I left work around 4pm and stopped at the Davis County Library in Layton to vote early. I waited 25 minutes in line to get my electronic ballot and then another 4 minutes to cast my vote. There were 8 voting machines. Voters were taking a fair amount of time because there was a lot to vote on.

I figured out who and what to vote for beforehand so that I wouldn’t have to decide at the polling station. There are four constitutional amendments on the ballot. I voted for conservative candidates that I hope will cut spending and possibly raise taxes to achieve a balanced budget.

For information on voting I recommend the excellent website Vote.Utah.Gov. For the 2010 election results there is Utah Election Results.

Arlen Specter

First Utah’s Senator Bennett (alias Bailout Bob) was stricken from the November ballot. Then Democrat Representative Mollohan of West Virginia lost to anti-incumbent sentiment. Last night Rand Paul soundly defeated establishment candidate Trey Grayson and Arlen Specter lost to a younger and far less experienced rival in Pennsylvania.

With record deficits it is obvious that Washington has failed. This is an anti-Washington year as incumbents are finding out. The big spenders are getting particularly hard hit, especially those that voted for the bailout. Now it is time for the voters to bailout the congressmen — all the way into retirement.

I am not one to get rid of an incumbent just because they have been in Washington a long time. I vote against the big spenders who keep on racking up the debt that one day will have to be paid back — plus a whole lot of interest.

See if it is time for your Member of Congress to be retired by perusing The Bailout Page.

Ron and Rand Paul

Last week Democrat Representative Mollohan of West Virginia lost to anti-incumbent sentiment. The loss came soon after Utah’s Senator Bennett (alias Bailout Bob) was stricken from the November ballot.

Now conservative Rand Paul in a Republican Kentucky primary has soundly defeated establishment candidate Trey Grayson. Rand Paul in his victory speech said:

We’ve come to take our government back. This Tea Party movement is a message to Washington that we’re unhappy and that we want things done differently. The mandate of our victory tonight is huge. What you have done and what we are doing can transform America. I think America’s greatness hinges on us doing something to save the country. The Tea Party movement is about saving the country from a mountain of debt that is devouring our country.

The Los Angles Times wrote:

Paul, 47, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist who had never sought political office, started far behind the establishment favorite Grayson. But he surged ahead with a plain-spoken style and a platform rooted in small-government, anti-Washington thinking: term limits, a balanced-budget amendment, a requirement that lawmakers read every word of legislation before it passes and a stipulation that laws spell out their constitutional underpinning.

See if it is time for your Member of Congress to be retired by perusing The Bailout Page.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Representative Alan Mollohan

Last week Democrat Representative Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia lost in a primary defeat that indicates the anti-incumbent sentiment is alive and well. Mollohan’s loss comes soon after Utah’s Senator Bob Bennett was stricken from the November ballot in the state’s Republican state convention.

Mollohan is a 14 term veteran who hasn’t faced a serious primary fight in over a decade and was considered unbeatable. Mollohan was dogged by ethics allegations over the past few years and opposition for his vote in favor of President Obama’s health-care bill didn’t help.

Mollohan was a veteran appropriator who took pride in delivering federally financed projects to his state. But voters’ alarm over deficit spending is turning that practice into a liability. With unsustainable debt voters are not buying pork barrel projects and bailouts any more.

See if it is time for your Member of Congress to be retired by perusing The Bailout Page.

Photo Credit: The National Academy of Sciences

Bailout Bob

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), commonly called “The Bailout”, is a program to which a majority of citizens were opposed. The total cost, as of May 2010 is $586.3 billion, allocated or promised to 836 companies and 13 programs. $79.7 billion was spent on companies for which the bailout was not intended, such as in the non-financial sector, with money going to auto companies such as GM.

There is still $319.4 billion outstanding, 59.6% of the total. See Pro Publica for the latest State of the Bailout.

I personally believe a strong message should be sent to those still in office, who voted for the bailout. An appropriate way to do this is at the ballot box in November. However, the opportunity may come sooner. When the citizens of Utah had the chance to finally tell a senator what they thought of his bailout vote, he was dumped at the state convention.

I have created a Bailout page containing a table so that citizens can see which of their representatives and senators voted for the bailout. When a politician leaves office, by choice or otherwise, I will update the table.

The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men ~ Alexander Hamilton

Mike Lee is challenging Bob Bennett for his senate seat. Lee’s website clearly defines his stance on a variety of issues, with the emphasis on Five Steps to a Return to Limited Government. I am discussing each of these five steps, examining them on their merits. Previously I discussed Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4.

Step 5: End the Era of the Lifetime Politician

Mike Lee’s proposal:

“The runaway growth of the federal government will continue as long as we retain a system that assures the existence of lifetime politicians. A career member of Congress inevitably will come to believe that that body has the answer to all social problems. The Constitution should be amended to limit service in each house of Congress to 12 years.

There are three parts to this proposal:

1. The system encourages lifetime politicians.
2. Congress thinks its has all the answers.
3. An amendment to limit service is needed.

The system that is spoken about here is the U.S. Constitution. It is not easily amended and those that advocate an amendment to solve a problem of the day sound good to the masses. When the amendment goes nowhere then the politician can say that they tried. Advocating amendments is a safe election platform.

It is true that the president of the United States is limited to two terms. The proposed amendment here would limit a senator to two terms also. A representative would have six terms.

One negative is that the people will have one choice taken away, namely that they cannot retain a favorite politician. However, I am not convinced that that would be a big disadvantage.

Summary

My grade for this proposal is 2 out of 5 because it would be highly unlikely to come to pass. Congress would have to start the amendment process and they would have no incentive to do so.

While it sounds great to base some of your platform on passing amendments, the reality is they are highly unlikely to get passed.

What do you the people say?

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago ~ John Adams

Mike Lee is challenging Bob Bennett for his senate seat. Lee’s website clearly defines his stance on a variety of issues, with the emphasis on Five Steps to a Return to Limited Government. I am discussing each of these five steps, examining them on their merits. Previously I discussed Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3

Step 4: Reduce Government Regulations

Mike Lee’s proposal:

The answer to an economic downturn is not a government stimulus, but a reduction in government regulation and bureaucracy to allow the natural forces of our private enterprise system to rebound without undue interference.

There are two parts to this proposal:

1. Do not use government stimulus in economic downturns.
2. Reduce regulation and bureaucracy to allow private enterprise to rebound.

Stimulus

The conventional wisdom is for governments to pick up the spending when consumers retrench. This is not as wise as many want us to believe. All of this stimulus spending is creating huge deficits that in later years will be even more of a drain on the economy because of the additional interest.

Those that do have money to spend because they have little or no debt and have planned for times such as these are not likely to increase spending. And why not? Because they are spooked by the government spending! They see higher taxes and/or high inflation up ahead and so put away extra money or convert it to gold.

So the very deficit stimulus spending by government has the opposite effect on the populace most able to stimulate the economy.

Reduce Regulation

Not owning a business I know little about regulations. But if they are anything like the tax code they must indeed be onerous. Some would argue that it was lack of regulation that caused the recent economic meltdown. It seems to me that it was partly government pushing banks to loan to people who should never have received loans. And regulations that should have been enforced were not. Money was also given away too quickly to dubious bailouts.

Just by letting states manage more of their own affairs without federal interference would result is less regulation. Of course mistakes will be made but surely things cannot get any worse.

Summary

My grade for this proposal is 5 out of 5 because I never believed that the stimulus money was spent wisely. There is even TARP money left that the politicians are looking around for causes to spend it on. If it was such an emergency that this money be appropriated how come there are billions still left over a year later?

Bailouts should have been made on a case by case basis and only in a dire emergency. “Saving jobs” is not an economic emergency, although granted it is for the soon to be unemployed.

What do you the people say?

Next Time

Mike Lee’s Step 5: End the Era of the Lifetime Politician